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The Syndrome of the House Taken Over* a Síndrome Da Casa Tomada

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The Syndrome of the House Taken Over* a Síndrome Da Casa Tomada Os conteúdos deste periódico de acesso aberto estão licenciados sob os termos da Licença Creative Commons Atribuição-UsoNãoComercial-ObrasDerivadasProibidas 3.0 Unported. 4 The syndrome of the house taken over* A síndrome da casa tomada **Eduardo Luft Abstract: To overcome the paradoxical situation in which the modern subject finds itself, on conceptualizing nature in such a way that its very presence in nature becomes inconceivable, modernity has supplied at least four alternatives: a) the first is to defend dualism (Descartes, Kant); b) the second option is to support a monism of nature (Spinoza, Hobbes); c) the third alternative is to defend a monism of subjectivity (Fichte); d) the fourth and last alternative is to support a dialectical monism (Schelling, Hegel). It is well known that, of these four alternatives to the self-interpretation crisis of modern subjectivity, the first ultimately had a more lasting influence on the philosophical scene, marking, point to point, this last breath of modernity that some call post-modern, which flows into the present situation of “hyperincommensurability” between subjectivity and nature, as diagnosed by Bruno Latour. The crisis of subjectivity thus becomes a crisis of philosophy, which ends up as a hostage to the syndrome of the house taken over. Keywords: Dialectical monism. Crisis of modern subjectivity. Nature. Ontology. System. Resumo: Com o intuito de superar a situação paradoxal em que se encontra, ao conceitualizar a natureza de tal modo que a sua própria presença na natureza resulta inconcebível, a modernidade apresenta ao menos quatro alternativas: a) defesa do dualismo (Descartes, Kant); b) apelo a um monismo da natureza (Spinoza, Hobbes); c) afirmação de um monismo da subjetividade (Fichte); d) ou, por fim, elaboração de um monismo dialético (Schelling, Hegel). É bem conhecido que, destas quatro alternativas à crise de autointerpretação da subjetividade moderna, a primeira terá a influência mais duradoura na cena filosófica, marcando, ponto a ponto, este último alento da modernidade que alguns chamam de pós-modernidade, e desembocando na presente situação de “hipercomensurabilidade” entre subjetividade e natureza diagnosticada por Bruno Latour. A crise da subjetividade torna-se, assim, crise da filosofia, que termina refém da síndrome da casa tomada. Palavras-chave: Monismo dialético. Crise da subjetividade moderna. Natureza. Ontologia. Sistema. * I am grateful to Erasmus Mundus EuroPhilosophie Programme and to Professor Markus Gabriel, for the grant and the invitation to work as a visiting professor at the University of Bonn (2012). This paper is based on the first of my Bonn lectures. ** Prof. Dr., PUCRS. Veritas Porto Alegre v. 58 n. 2 maio/ago. 2013 p. 295-307 E. Luft – The syndrome of the house taken over Modernity is permeated, from its inception, by a crisis of self- interpretation. We can explain the meaning of this crisis by extracting consequences from the mechanist turn in modern thinking, illuminated by the simple example given in Descartes’ second meditation (Med., p. 20ff). I refer to the waxen image that, when it has just been extracted from the honeycomb and exposed to fire, loses all of its initial qualities: if it is cold, it becomes warm; if it is solid, it liquefies; if it carries the pleasant aroma of flowers, now its perfume fades away. After so many changes, what is left of this object? What is in fact this that underlies all changes? Pure res extensa, Descartes will say. A thing, something that has a size and can thus be quantified. The example is simple, but the consequences are radical. Descartes invites the readers to place themselves in the position of someone who crosses the threshold that separates the new view of the world not only from pre-modern understanding, but also from our own daily perception of the natural phenomena. Indeed, in daily life, natural events show themselves to us permeated by qualitative traits, by a certain texture, odor, color, that renders them familiar, convenient, appropriate to our own presence in the world as percipient subjects. This world that was previously available to subjectivity, the place where one “felt at home”, after the modern turnaround, now becomes the situation of their exile. There is nothing in nature but pure res extensa, something that can be determined based on mathematically described natural laws. Or, using Ashby’s (1956, p. 24) conceptualization of cybernetics, from being the home of subjectivity, nature is reverted into a determinate machine, a machine ruled by univalent closed transformation processes. Natural processes are seen as transformations of a system that does not produce any new element compared to its initial state (closure), and whose behavior in T1 is entirely determined by its state at T0 (univalence). What is the place of subjectivity in this world ruled by deterministic laws? The self-image of the thinking subject as a free being, besides bearing and instituting meaning, cannot be preserved if it is to be considered part of the nature-machine. However, if the subject is not part of nature, what is its ontological locus? Four alternatives To overcome the paradoxical situation in which the modern subject finds itself, on conceptualizing nature in such a way that its very presence in nature becomes inconceivable, modernity supplied at least four alternatives. The first is to defend dualism, that is, to preserve the self- image of the subject and its new conceptualization of nature, but to split 296 Veritas, v. 58, n. 2, maio/ago. 2013, p. 295-307 E. Luft – The syndrome of the house taken over these two poles into independent spheres. Descartes himself chooses to think of these poles as independent ontological spheres, in the famous metaphysical distinction between res extensa and res cogitans, between the determinate machine and the free, thinking subject. In Kant, on the other hand, dualism is instituted in the context of the transcendental opposition between our way of knowing objects as phenomena that can be subsumed to a priori synthetic judgments, namely, as events that can be subsumed to natural laws, and our way of thinking about our own cognitive activity as guided by non-objectifiable ideas (among them, the idea of the subject itself as noumenon). The second option is to support a monism of nature, that is, to preserve the mechanist view and reinterpret the self-image of the subject in such a way as to integrate it to the nature-machine as a whole. It is the option of all of us who in some way intend to naturalize subjectivity, if by naturalization we mean the attempt to reinterpret our self-image in the context of the physicalist discourse, redescribing the subject as part of the causal weave of natural events. Thus, for Spinoza, human freedom should not be understood as the free exploration of a non-predetermined field of possibilities whence springs contingency. This would be pure illusion, according to the philosopher. We should, on the contrary, conceive it as a type of self-imposed necessity, as a self determination of the agent.1 This is also the path taken by Hobbes, when he reinterpreted liberty as non-impediment2 in the deterministic flow of the events described in his social physics. And it is the option of those of our contemporaries who seek to understand not only our free agency but also our capacity to produce meaning, or our way of being as agents (practically or theoretically) guided by discursively articulated priorities (or values), or, in short, human intelligence itself as a product of deterministic computer processes.3 The third alternative is to defend a monism of subjectivity. To deal with this impasse, we seek to reconstruct our concept of nature, with a view to integrating it in our self image. Possibly the most notable thinker who defended this alternative is Fichte. His “transcendental deduction” of our sense of objectivity in general, of the a priori structure that shapes 1 According to def. 7 of Ethics, “that thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone” (Spinoza, Et., p. 2). 2 “By liberty is understood”, according to Hobbes, “the absence of external impediments; which impediments may oft take away part of a man’s power to do what he would, but cannot hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgement and reason shall dictate to him” (Hobbes, Lev., p. 79). 3 For the critique of the assumption that all computer processes are deterministic, and to defend the thesis that human intelligence can be simulated by chaotic computer processes (that deal with randomness), see. R. Kurzweil (2006, p. 475). Veritas, v. 58, n. 2, maio/ago. 2013, p. 295-307 297 E. Luft – The syndrome of the house taken over the intelligibility sphere in which our “representations accompanied by the feeling of need” (Fichte, EE, p. 423) are shaped, is entirely developed as a necessary moment in the process of self-determination of the subject seeking full self-knowledge and full freedom. Nature, thus, is still opposed to freedom, but now it is instrumentalized as part of a general theory of practical reason or of the free subject. The sphere of natural phenomena is a barrier (Schranke) in the terminology of Hegel’s Doctrine of Being, used as a resistance to be overcome by the activity of the I which intends to realize its own freedom in the context of moral Oughtness (Sollen). I believe that it is legitimate to see, in this permanent tension projected to the infinity between the theoretical I and the practical I, between nature and freedom, the most remarkable conceptualization of that deficit of self-interpretation of modern subjectivity, that was mentioned in the beginning.
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